Pokemon Home

Pokedex

Price Guide Set List

Message Board

Pokemon GO Tips

Pokemon News

Featured Articles

Trading Card Game
- Price Guide
- Price Guide
- Card of the Day
- Professional Grading
- Killer Deck Reports
- Deck Garage
- William Hung
- Jason Klaczynski
- Jeremy's Deck Garage
- Johnny Blaze's Banter
- TCG Strategies
- Rulings Help
- Apprentice & Patch
- Apprentice League
- Spoilers & Translations
- Official Rules
- Featured Event Reports
- Top of the World
- An X-Act Science
- Error Cards
- Printable Checklist
- Places to Play

Nintendo Tips
- Red/Blue
- Yellow
- Gold & Silver
- Crystal
- Ruby & Sapphire
- Fire Red & Leaf Green
- Emerald
- SNAP
- Pinball
- TCG cart
- Stadium
- PuPuzzle League
- Pinball: Ruby/Sapphire
- Pokemon Coliseum
- Pokemon Box
- Pokemon Channel

GameBoy Help
- ClownMasters Fixes
- Groudon's Den
- Pokemon of the Week

E-Card Reader FAQ's
- Expedition
- Aquapolis
- Skyridge
- Construction Action Function
- EON Ticket Manual

Deck Garage
- Pokemaster's Pit Stop
- Kyle's Garage
- Ghostly Gengar

Cartoon/Anime
- Episode Listing
- Character Bios
- Movies & Videos
- What's a Pokemon?
- Video List
- DVD List

Featured Articles

Pojo's Toy Box

Books & Videos

Downloads

Advertise With Us
- Sponsors
- Links

Chat

About Us
Contact Us

Pojo's Pokemon Card of the Day

		Ninetales #20/95 HS Unleashed Date Reviewed: June 14, 2010 Ratings & Reviews Summary Modified: 1.87 Limited: 2.50 Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 being the worst.  3 ... average.   5 is the highest rating. Back to the main COTD Page
Combos With:

Baby Mario 2010 UK National Seniors Champion	Ninetales (Unleashed)   Hello and welcome to a new week of Pojo’s CotD. We kick off the week with a look at Ninetales UL. For some reason, Ninetales cards nearly always have very pretty artwork, especially the old Dragon Frontiers one, which is one of my all-time favourites. This one isn’t too bad either, but can it be more than just a pretty face?   Well, it’s a Stage 1 with 90HP, a Retreat cost of one, and Water Weakness. All of these are acceptable, I suppose, but it’s clearly not the strongest of Pokémon, so it will need to have something special to offer if it is going to see play. Ninetales doesn’t have any Powers or Bodies, so we are going to have to rely on the attacks.   The second one, Searing Flame, is ok, but definitely not special. For [R][C] you get 30 damage and auto-burn. Not bad value, and potentially annoying for an opponent, but not really an attack you can build a deck around.   The first attack, Heat Acceleration, is more interesting. For one Fire Energy, you can search your Discard for up to three Fire Energy and attach them to one of your Pokémon. Now Energy acceleration is a good thing, but Energy acceleration that requires an attack is usually less so – as it is rather slow for this format. That’s why you don’t see too many people playing Weavile SW any more. To make things worse, the Energy has to be taken from the Discard, not the Deck, so if you want to use this attack quickly, you will have to find some way of dumping the required Energy. Until the rotation, Felicity’s Drawing is probably your best bet. Combine that with Ninetales HGSS and you have some serious drawpower in your deck. There is one other thing you should be aware of though . . . the moment you start piling Energy on to a Benched Pokémon, it will become an instant target for snipe KOs or being dragged out and KO’d by Luxray. Should that happen, you will be right back to square one, and your opponent will be at a considerable advantage.   For those reasons, I think that Typhlosion Prime will remain the Energy accelerator of choice for Fire decks, despite the fact that this Ninetales fits in very well with its HGSS cousin. If the format really does slow down massively (unlikely, now that we know it will be MD-on), then Ninetales could become an option for Energy intensive Fire decks.   Rating   Modified: 1.75 (Does something good . . . too slowly) Limited: 2.5 (might work with the Colourless Pokémon, and the damage attack is reasonable too)   Combos with . . .   Ninetales HGSS Charizard AR
virusyosh	Hello again readers, and welcome to Pojo's Card of the Day! This week we are reviewing even more of the cards from the HS Unleashed expansion. Today's Card of the Day is Ninetales. Ninetales is a Stage 1 Fire Pokemon. There are currently 5 legal Ninetales in Standard right now (4 post-rotation), but Ninetales HGSS is currently the only one that sees any widespread play. Will this Ninetales be any different? 90 HP is standard for a Stage 1, but is unfortunately low in today's metagame. Double Water Weakness is very bad, given the popularity of Gyarados, Kingdra, and in some areas, Rain Dance and Palkia. No Resistance is to be expected. A Retreat Cost of 1 is decent, and can be paid if necessary. Ninetales's first attack, Heat Acceleration, allows you to search your discard pile for up to 3 Fire Energy cards and attach them to one of your Pokemon for [R]. This would be great if it were a Power, however as an attack, it's probably too slow for the fast-paced Power, Trainer, and Supporter-driven format that exists right now. In the future, however, this card may be able to be used with Ninetales HGSS in something like a Charizard deck as a transition Pokemon to fully power your next attacker, however this still may be even too slow after the rotation. The second attack, Searing Flame, deals 30 damage and burns for [RC]. While automatic burn is great, the damage output is underwhelming, so you're probably better sticking with other options. Modified: 2/5 Ninetales UL is hardly useless, although it is currently too slow to be truly useful in the format. Attaching 3 energy from the discard pile is excellent, fully powering many things (notably Charizard) after getting Fire Energy in the discard pile via KO or using something like Ninetales HGSS's Roast Reveal. However, using an attack to do this attachment will give your opponent valuable time to either further power themselves up, KO Ninetales and take a prize, or both.  Limited: 2.5/5 Not so bad here. Heat Acceleration is only really useful if you're running mostly Fire, but can still provide great acceleration for your Magmortar or something similar. Even still, 30 damage and automatic burn is nice, and can probably get you at least one KO (or very close). Combos with: Ninetales HGSS, Charizard AR
Mad Mattezhion  Professor Bathurst League Australia	Ninetales (HS Unleashed)   We start the new week with Ninetales, who is sadly nowhere near as pretty or as playable as the HGSS version.   90 HP is healthy and standard, Water weakness is okay and no resistance is standard. 1 retreat cost is okay but on Ninetales really sucks because the other versions get free retreat or far better attacks/powers for 1 retreat. So far, pretty standard stats for a Stage 1 but below par for other Ninetales versions.   PS from now on, I'll just forget resistance unless the card actually has one, or deserves one it didn't get.   Now the attacks. Heat Acceleration looks useful at first glance, because it reattaches up to 3 R energy from your discard pile. Unfortunately, this uses up your attack for the turn and you need to have at least one R energy attached to Ninetales to begin with. Therefore, you can't use it to retrieve energy when you are out of energy in play (which is really the only time you can justify attacking to retrieve energy). This attack would be borderline useful if it was free to use, and would even be possibly playable if it was on a Basic instead of a Stage 1. But the real reason this attack is useless is because there are several poke-powers and trainers that allow you to retrive and/or attach the energy, then still be able attack afterwards.   Searing Flame is again, completely useless. For RC, you get 30 damage and auto Burn. This is a decent attack for a tech Pokemon, but Ninetales is clearly not a very good tech as it has no power/body and its tech attack is useless. As a main attack, Searing Flame is has lousy damage output and Special conditios have been weak for far too long in this game.   Sorry Ninetales, but at least the HGSS version eases my fury at this maltreatment of such a majestic Pokemon.   Modified: 1.5 (maybe I'm being too harsh, but I'm really unhappy about the undeserved bad treatment that Ninetales is getting) Limited: 1.25 (the attacks are slightly better here, but Fire is weak in this set filled with Water Pokemon)   Combos with: a very angry letter to the design lab!